Preliminary experiment of boiling detection in the reactor vessel by acoustic method

not registered; not registered; not registered; not registered; Fukami, Akihiro*; not registered; Igawa, Kenichi*

An acoustic detection method is one of the FBR reactor core malfunction detection methods, and is regarded as being promising. In this study, the preliminary experiment of boiling detection by acoustic method was conducted at JOYO to measure the acoustic signal level and to investigate the applicability of the acoustic method. The experiment was performed on June 13 and 14, 1990 during the 8th periodic inspection of JOYO. The results obtained though the experiment are as follows: (1)Sodium bubbling (boiling) induced by the electric heater was detected as the fluctuation of temperature single of the thermocouple attached to surface of the electric heater. (2)Bubbling single of the acoustic detector could not be identified cleary because of the high background noise caused by the primary main pump vibration, sodium flow in the reacter vessel and the electric supply in the containment vessel. (3)The correlation between the signal of the acoustic detector or the fluctuation of temperature signal of the thermocouple and the flow rate of the primary loops was not ascertained. It became clear through this study that the validity of the reactor core malfunction detction by acoustic method depend on the peculiar noise level in the reactor vessel, and the reduction of noise is the subject for a future study.